THE WOODCOCK. 
243 
informed me in 1839^ that many years previously he had known 
twenty-two brace of woodcocks to be killed there in a day by one 
gun. About thirty years before that time^, he was in attendance 
on Lord O^Neill;, at Killarney, when his lordship and Major Hig- 
ginson killed, to their own two guns, in three or four days, 173 
brace.'^ A sporting friend visiting at Loss, county of Galway, in 
the winter of 1842 or 1843 mentions that seventy brace were 
killed by five guns during three days^ shooting about Cliristmas ; 
— twenty-seven and a half brace were bagged on one of the days. 
It was considered a bad year for woodcocks in that quarter. 
There is still, he states, excellent cock-shooting in many of the 
county Galway covers. 
Departure . — In March the woodcock generally takes its depar- 
ture from the north of Ireland, and is rarely seen at the end of 
the month ; so late as April the 5th, 1833, two appeared near 
BeKast ; and in 1836, the gamekeeper at Tollymore Park shot 
four and a half brace on the 7th, and three and a half on the 
11th of April — much the latest migratory birds he had ever met 
with. At Ennishowen, in the most northern portion of the 
island, a sportsman assures me that he has seen woodcocks in the 
heath when April was far advanced : here also they have occurred 
particularly early in the season. But for what has previously 
been stated (p. 238), we might expect this to be one of the first 
parts of Ireland for them to touch at in autumn, and, consequently, 
one of the last for them to leave in spring. 
Woodcocks in Islay. 
The island of Islay, off the western coast of Scotland, has been noted 
for furnishing good woodcock-shooting, of the truth of which I liad 
* Daniel, iu his ‘ Rural Sports’ (vol.iii. p. 172), mentions, but without stating time* 
or place, that “ in Ireland, the Earl of Clermont shot fifty brace in a day,” adding, 
“ but then it should be premised, that such was the abundance of these birds as to be 
sold in some parts (for instance near Bally shannon, in the county of Donegal) for 
one penny each and the expense of powder and shot.” Ravensdale Park, one of 
the seats of Viscount Clermont (a title lately become extinct) at the base of the high 
mountains between Newry and Dundalk, is apparently one of the finest localities 
I have ever seen for woodcocks when di’iven from the mountains by frost or snow. 
* The volume whence this is extracted (the octavo edition) was published in 180;'. 
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